VFYW: That Bloody Sign!

For contest #345, we find ourselves in a beautiful imperial city with a destructive past.

(For the View From Your Window contest, the results below exceed the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)

The VFYW’s latest small-world moment comes from this lurker:

I don’t submit entries for the View From Your Window, although it’s fun to make a wild guess to myself and then read through other guesses to see how far off I am. I didn’t see last week’s window, which is unfortunate because I would have known it in a second, since I’ve been vacationing on Malden Island for my entire 50 years.

Ironically, at one point during our family reunion on the island this summer, I was standing at a window in our cottage and thinking I should take a picture to submit for the VFYW. It would have been approximately the reverse of the picture you posted. I didn’t end up taking a picture, but here’s one my sister took:

This picture was taken from a point on Malden Island that’s directly behind the blue umbrella in the original picture. 

Here’s an update from our charitable sleuth who flagged the GoFundMe last week:

Wow! That was very generous of you guys. I hope others will contribute as well. I’m going to send in another donation to honor yours. I’m thrilled.

And a big thanks to the three window sleuths who anonymously donated to the Marshall family in Maine — seen here:

On to this week’s contest:

Ever since I got the view from the library in Singapore, I’ve been lurking in hopes of getting another one. This contest is hard ... and surprisingly addictive! I invested enough time over the past few days on this week’s view that I couldn’t let myself let it go without sending something. So here’s my guess:

Temple roofs (Buddhist?), mini splits, rooftop tanks, a “hotel” sign in English, tropical plants with water-stained walls, corrugated-metal-clad building additions, orthogonal urban pattern, medium density. I’m going with Mandalay, Myanmar, since it fits the vibe of this drone video — even though I combed the city on Google Earth and couldn’t find it exactly. My guess is I’m just a few more clicks away from locating it, or I’ve embarrassed myself completely and I’m on the wrong continent.

Right continent. A sleuth in Chicago also goes with Malaysia:

The presence of what is possibly a Hindu temple is a clue. Having been to Singapore, I’m aware of the presence of a South Asian minority in SE Asia. However, this doesn’t look like Singapore. I’ll guess Malaysia. The only city in Malaysia of which I’m aware is Kuala Lumpur — but away from the downtown metropolitan district.

Our sleuth in Shiprock gets to the right region:

The ornamentation on the burgundy roof at center-right practically screams Southeast Asia, and the partially obscured hotel name nonetheless shows “hotel” with a circonflex in the French style. So let’s go with Vientiane, Laos.

Not Laos, but close. Chini reveals that we’re on the coast:

Oftentimes my gut response to a view comes in the form of a movie quote, and this one was no exception. My first thought when the image popped up was, “I’m still only in Saigon.” Turns out, though, my gut was feeding me a bit of truthiness. Instead of Apocalypse Now, I should have been thinking about a similar movie set in a similar country but a very different city ...